Just a quick Steem post to record what just happened...
For some unknown reasons, Cloudflare CDN went down (not for the first time) which many websites run on. This affects almost all Steem based frontends, which includes @steemit, @dtube, @steemconnect, @steempeak and others. The reason is that all of them uses their CDN (which is centralized) to run the websites, so that they load faster.
This shows how a single entity can still take down the accessibility to the Steem blockchain.
One of the only ways to access the Steem blockchain is through the @esteemapp desktop app created by @good-karma. Even though it's possible to access the Steem blockchain data this way, it feels weird as images (including avatar) does not load at all.
The solution is to eventually ditch the HTTP protocol used by the frontends, and use decentralized protocols to serve content, such as IPFS. This will reduce the reliance of a single entity to serve web content, as such protocols are P2P which work without a centralized server.
I'm happy to see that a DTube desktop app is being worked on by @vaultec and @gray00, which is currently the most popular decentralized video platform. This is a good example of how DApps should be accessed, without using the HTTP protocol which is not designed for the decentralized web. It would be good to see other Steem DApps such as @steemhunt work on such app so that this incident will not affect us in the future.
This was posted with @esteemapp desktop app as this is the only frontend I can use to post onto Steem at the moment 😉
I've seen that @steempeak have been down for almost 13 minutes :(
But running a website without a CDN will probably cause more issue in the long run. And probably all those website use Cloudflare because their service is quite good and the free tier is quite generous :D
You should dump websites . Make decentralized applications.
$rewarding 100% 9min
Thanks for mentioning eSteem app. Kindly join our Discord or Telegram channel for more benefits and offers on eSteem, don't miss our amazing updates.
Follow @esteemapp as well!
@partiko is s good Frontend as well
Posted using Partiko Android
Partiko is not open source sadly :\
Esteem works as well during outages like this , they build their system to have a failover RPC users can select, if one doesn't work hopefully in the future we have 1000s more selections in every country on planet earth.
Hello!
This post has been manually curated, resteemed
and gifted with some virtually delicious cake
from the @helpiecake curation team!
Much love to you from all of us at @helpie!
Keep up the great work!
Manually curated by @solominer.
Thanks for using eSteem!
Your post has been voted as a part of eSteem encouragement program. Keep up the good work! Install Android, iOS Mobile app or Windows, Mac, Linux Surfer app, if you haven't already!
Learn more: https://esteem.app
Join our discord: https://discord.gg/8eHupPq